Back to the roots

It's easy to think that panic and anxiety attacks are caused by certain events. This is however a misconception that I myself try to get rid of - it's a self-fulfilling prophecy if I ever saw one. If you believe the attacks are caused by something, they will - so when I get anxious about future events I try very hard not to think that life will return back to normal once they are over. Panic attacks are just misconceptions your body has learned, thinking that a certain situation is dangerous and triggers the fight or flight reaction.

The five weeks that I've studied the yoga sutras with Padma have really opened my eyes to meditation and for the first time I really feel I can use meditation to change how panic and anxiety attacks affect my life. This week for example, has been "a bad one" - meaning I've had several new (and therefore unknown) events that have been causing me stress. First was the babysitting on Tuesday, and the second was a yoga class I had promised to cover for Connie at a local gym. Both were really something I knew would be fine once I was in the situation, but that my number six personality still made me doubt. As you know, the babysitting was a great success, so today was time for the subbing. And it went fine, of course.

Teaching at a gym is such a different environment than teaching at a yoga studio. I myself started my yoga practice at my local gym back in Southsea so I've never held my nose up to gyms as places to practice yoga as some people do. I think for most people it's going to easier to try a yoga class if it's available at the gym where they do all their other exercise than it will be to find out where a yoga studio is, and then feel like a total newbie trying to access a mystic cult. Most people will just not bother, going to a yoga studio will require much more dedication. So I had no qualms about subbing for Connie when she asked me to.

In many ways tonight's experience reminded me of my "roots", although I was extremely lucky in that my first teacher was a hard-core ashtangi. But there I was, in the middle of the noisy gym, in a room that was designed to be cool, with seven total newbies of which only few had ever done yoga. I had my program planned out, but as always happens it's the students that make the class, not the teacher. I did what I could - I had to demonstrate a lot myself, I had to skip vinyasas, but I think I did pretty well with what I had. Although the total newbies didn't look too happy during the class they were smiling afterwards - maybe not the perfect experience but it all I need is more experience.

And afterwards I spoke with Svetlana who owns the gym and gave her my card (I just got my lovely business cards I had ordered from Moo) and asked her to give me a call if she needed more subs - which she said she always did. Just like that, I'm marketing myself as a yoga teacher, and it feels... cool.

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